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The project also includes a fiber-optic highway to three of the reservation’s most remote towns, eventually giving them access to high-speed Internet that can connect with the rest of the world, a Project Telephone Co. official said.

“One thing we’re really excited about, and I know that the Crow Tribe is, too, is it will bring capability to the reservation that they’ve never had before,” said Rich Hood, plant operations manager for Project Telephone. “The intention is that it will spur economic activity on the reservation and give everybody there access to Internet capability to allow them to do things urban people have been able to do for a long time.”

Those things include running businesses from home and better access to online education courses and telemedicine services, Hood said.

Customers will have to buy the Internet service; it will not be free. What the high-speed service may cost is unknown, but Hood could cost more than in urban areas because of the higher cost of maintaining the system.

The loan-grant package for Project Telephone, a subsidiary of Scobey-based Nemont Telephone Cooperative, was announced by President Barack Obama last week. About $14.5 million is a grant; the remainder will be a loan from the federal Rural Utilities Service.

The project is one of two stimulus-funded projects in Montana to expand access to high-speed Internet in underserved or unserved areas. The other is a $1.8 million award to the Montana State Library to upgrade public computer centers at 42 public libraries in the state.

Construction on portions of the Crow Reservation project could start as early as next summer, if engineering and right-of-way acquisition proceed on schedule, Hood said. But a project of this size generally takes three years to complete, from the time the final grant and loan papers are signed, he says. The signing should happen early this fall, he said.

Many reservation customers now have access to Internet through DSL technology, which offers speeds of .5 to 3 megabits per second. Higher-speed Internet service, such as cable Internet, is in the 7-to-8-megabit range.

Once the project is finished, homes and businesses getting fiber-optic cable to their premises will have access to service at 10 megabits per second, Hood said — with the potential for faster speed in the future.

“Once you get fiber to the premise, (the speed) is only limited by the electronics that you put on it,” he said.

The cost of buying the service hasn’t been determined.

Hood said new federal regulations coming out intend to keep prices and service in rural areas at reasonable levels, compared to urban areas, and that the stimulus award requires the new project to serve “anchor institutions” like schools, hospitals and public agencies at least 25 percent lower than normal rates.

The project also is expected to bring jobs to the Crow Reservation, which has high unemployment. Hood said it could employ close to 100 people over the life of the project.

Whether some of those workers are from the Crow Reservation depends if they can get training for the skills they’ll need in construction and other areas, Hood said.

“It’s our intention to engage the Crow Tribe immediately to try to find the answer to that question,” he said. “We know the skills that the contractors or going to be looking for. They’d rather hire local talent than bring people in from the outside.

“It’s 12 to 18 months before construction starts. We can bring people up to speed for the skills they need.”

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Autor(en)/Author(s): Mike Dennison

Quelle/Source: Billings Gazette, 09.07.2010

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